Law and the legal system through which law is effected are very powerful, yet the power of the law has always been limited by the laws of nature, upon which the law has now direct grip. Human law now faces an unprecedented challenge, the emergence of a second limit on its grip, a new “species” of intelligent agents (AI machines) that can perform cognitive tasks that until recently only humans could. What happens, as a matter of law, when another species (...) interacts with us, can be integrated into human minds and bodies, makes “real-world” decisions—not through human proxies, but directly—and does all this “intelligently”, with what one could call autonomous agency or even a “mind” of its own? The article starts from the clear premise that control cannot be exercised directly on AI machines through human law. That control can only be effected through laws that apply to humans. This has several regulatory implications. The article’s first discusses what, in any attempt to regulate AI machines, the law can achieve. Having identified what the law can do, the article then canvases what the law should aim to achieve overall. The article encapsulate its analysis in a list of both doctrinal and normative principles that should underpin any regulation aimed at AI machines. Finally, the article compares three transnational options to implement the proposed regulatory approach. (shrink)

During Leibniz's lifetime, interest in the interpretation of the Bible and biblical prophecy became central to the theological and political concerns of Protestant Europe. Leibniz's treatment of this phenomenon will be examined in the light of his views on the nature of revelation and its role in his defence of Christianity. It will be argued that Leibniz's defence of the miracle of revelation – unlike his arguments on behalf of the core Christian mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation – is (...) demonstrable by purely natural and scientific means, especially the verification of history. (shrink)

This collection of essays explores the metaphysical thesis that the living world is not made up of substantial particles or things, as has often been assumed, but is rather constituted by processes. The biological domain is organised as an interdependent hierarchy of processes, which are stabilised and actively maintained at different timescales. Even entities that intuitively appear to be paradigms of things, such as organisms, are actually better understood as processes. Unlike previous attempts to articulate processual views of biology, which (...) have tended to use Alfred North Whitehead’s panpsychist metaphysics as a foundation, this book takes a naturalistic approach to metaphysics. It submits that the main motivations for replacing an ontology of substances with one of processes are to be found in the empirical findings of science. Biology provides compelling reasons for thinking that the living realm is fundamentally dynamic, and that the existence of things is always conditional on the existence of processes. The phenomenon of life cries out for theories that prioritise processes over things, and it suggests that the central explanandum of biology is not change but rather stability, or more precisely, stability attained through constant change. This edited volume brings together philosophers of science and metaphysicians interested in exploring the consequences of a processual philosophy of biology. The contributors draw on an extremely wide range of biological case studies, and employ a process perspective to cast new light on a number of traditional philosophical problems, such as identity, persistence, and individuality. (shrink)

It has become customary to conceptualize the living cell as an intricate piece of machinery, different to a man-made machine only in terms of its superior complexity. This familiar understanding grounds the conviction that a cell's organization can be explained reductionistically, as well as the idea that its molecular pathways can be construed as deterministic circuits. The machine conception of the cell owes a great deal of its success to the methods traditionally used in molecular biology. However, the recent introduction (...) of novel experimental techniques capable of tracking individual molecules within cells in real time is leading to the rapid accumulation of data that are inconsistent with an engineering view of the cell. This paper examines four major domains of current research in which the challenges to the machine conception of the cell are particularly pronounced: cellular architecture, protein complexes, intracellular transport, and cellular behaviour. It argues that a new theoretical understanding of the cell is emerging from the study of these phenomena which emphasizes the dynamic, self-organizing nature of its constitution, the fluidity and plasticity of its components, and the stochasticity and non-linearity of its underlying processes. (shrink)

We question whether the postulated revenge and forgiveness systems constitute true adaptations. Revenge and forgiveness are the products of multiple motivational systems and capacities, many of which did not exclusively evolve to support deterrence. Anger is more aptly construed as an adaptation that organizes independent mechanisms to deter transgressors than as the mediator of a distinct revenge adaptation.

This chapter draws on insights from non-equilibrium thermodynamics to demonstrate the ontological inadequacy of the machine conception of the organism. The thermodynamic character of living systems underlies the importance of metabolism and calls for the adoption of a processual view, exemplified by the Heraclitean metaphor of the stream of life. This alternative conception is explored in its various historical formulations and the extent to which it captures the nature of living systems is examined. Following this, the chapter considers the metaphysical (...) implications of reconceptualizing the organism from complex machine to flowing stream. What do we learn when we reject the mechanical and embrace the processual? Three key lessons for biological ontology are identified. The first is that activity is a necessary condition for existence. The second is that persistence is grounded in the continuous self-maintenance of form. And the third is that order does not entail design. (shrink)

“Practice” has become a ubiquitous term in the history of science, and yet historians have not always reflected on its philosophical import and especially on its potential connections with ethics. In this essay, we draw on the work of the virtue ethicist Alasdair MacIntyre to develop a theory of “communal practices” and explore how such an approach can inform the history of science, including allegations about the corruption of science by wealth or power; consideration of scientific ethics or “moral economies”; (...) the role of values in science; the ethical distinctiveness of scientific vocations; and the relationship between history of science and the practice of science itself. (shrink)

The standard view says that epistemic normativity is normativity of belief. If you’re an evidentialist, for example, you’ll think that all epistemic reasons are reasons to believe what your evidence supports. Here we present a line of argument that pushes back against this standard view. If the argument is right, there are epistemic reasons for things other than belief. The argument starts with evidentialist commitments and proceeds by a series of cases, each containing a reason. As the cases progress, the (...) reasons change from counting in favor of things like having a belief to things like performing ordinary actions. We argue that each of those reasons is epistemic. If the argument succeeds, we should think there are epistemic reasons to consider hypotheses, conduct thought and physical experiments, extend one’s evidence, and perform mundane tasks like eating a sandwich, just as there are epistemic reasons to believe what one’s evidence supports. (shrink)

In the first book-length study of American philosophy at the turn of the century, Daniel J. Wilson traces the formation of philosophy as an academic discipline. Wilson shows how the rise of the natural and physical sciences at the end of the nineteenth century precipitated a "crisis of confidence" among philosophers as to the role of their discipline. Deftly tracing the ways in which philosophers sought to incorporate scientific values and methods into their outlook and to redefine philosophy itself, (...) Wilson moves between close analysis of philosophical texts and consideration of professional careers of illustrative philosophers, such as Charles Sanders Peirce, John Dewey, and Josiah Royce. The author situates the emergence of professional philosophy in the context of the professionalization of American higher education and articulates, in the case of philosophy, the structures and values of a professional discipline. One of the most important consequences of this transformation was a new emphasis on communal theories of truth. Peirce, Dewey, and Royce all developed sophisticated and important theories of community as they were engaged in reshaping and redefining the limits of philosophy. This book will be of great importance for those interested in the history of philosophy, the rise of professions, and American intellectual and educational history, and to all those seeking to understand the contemporary revival of pragmatic thought and theories of community. (shrink)

Building on a number of recent studies that have turned to Hobbes in light of covid-19, I explore the context of Hobbes’ own encounters with plague while at Oxford, along with efforts to mitigate plague by the regime of James I. I then explore what role his encounters with plague may have played as he wrote his philosophical masterpiece, Leviathan.

Standard approaches to defining and evaluating environmental risk tend to reflect technocratic rather than democratic values. One consequence is that institutional mechanisms for achieving citizen participation in risk decisions rarely are studied or evaluated. This article presents a survey of five institutional mechanisms for allowing the lay public to influence environmental risk decisions: public hearings, initiatives, public surveys, negotiated rule making, and citizens review panels. It also defines democratic process criteria for assessing these and other participatory mechanisms.

The writings of the later Mohists are generally taken to contain several updates to the consequentialist ethical view held by the Mohist school. In this paper, I defend one interpretation of those updates and how they may have served, within the Mohists’ argumentative context, to make their views more defensible. I argue that we should reject A.C. Graham’s prominent interpretation, on which the later Mohists’ argumentative strategy is to develop a conception of the a priori and to ground their ethical (...) view in a form of a priori rationalism. I contend, instead, that the strength of the later Mohists’ ethical view comes largely from their adoption of a subjective criterion for identifying what counts as a benefit within their consequentialist view. I show how the adoption of this subjective criterion fits within a larger trend in later Mohist thought of coming to terms with the diversity of people’s evaluative standpoints, and further show how it equips the later Mohists with worthwhile responses to their philosophical rivals. (shrink)

While the contemporary philosophical literature is replete with discussion of the control or freedom required for moral responsibility, only more recently has substantial attention been devoted to the knowledge or awareness required, otherwise called the epistemic condition. This area of inquiry is rapidly expanding, as are the various positions within it. This chapter introduces two major positions: the reasonable expectation view and the quality of will view. The chapter then explores two dimensions of the epistemic condition that serve as fault (...) lines along which these two views diverge. The first dimension concerns different kinds of ignorance. The second concerns what agents can be directly blameworthy for. The chapter closes by sketching a novel approach that incorporates advantages of opposing positions on this topic. (shrink)

This article critically examines one of the most prevalent metaphors in modern biology, namely the machine conception of the organism (MCO). Although the fundamental differences between organisms and machines make the MCO an inadequate metaphor for conceptualizing living systems, many biologists and philosophers continue to draw upon the MCO or tacitly accept it as the standard model of the organism. This paper analyses the specific difficulties that arise when the MCO is invoked in the study of development and evolution. In (...) developmental biology the MCO underlies a logically incoherent model of ontogeny, the genetic program, which serves to legitimate three problematic theses about development: genetic animism, neo-preformationism, and developmental computability. In evolutionary biology the MCO is responsible for grounding unwarranted theoretical appeals to the concept of design as well as to the interpretation of natural selection as an engineer, which promote a distorted understanding of the process and products of evolutionary change. Overall, it is argued that, despite its heuristic value, the MCO today is impeding rather than enabling further progress in our comprehension of living systems. (shrink)

Can faith be valuable and, if so, under what conditions? We know of no theory-neutral way to address this question. So, we offer a theory of relational faith, and we supplement it with a complementary theory of relational faithfulness. We then turn to relationships of mutual faith and faithfulness with an eye toward exhibiting some of the ways in which, on our theory, faith and faithfulness can be valuable and disvaluable. We then extend the theory to other manifestations of faith (...) and faithfulness, propose a way to unify them under a theory of faith and faithfulness simpliciter, and explain how they can be neo-Aristotelian virtues and vices. We close with our solution to the value problem and avenues for further research. (shrink)

The concept of mechanism in biology has three distinct meanings. It may refer to a philosophical thesis about the nature of life and biology (‘mechanicism’), to the internal workings of a machine-like structure (‘machine mechanism’), or to the causal explanation of a particular phenomenon (‘causal mechanism’). In this paper I trace the conceptual evolution of ‘mechanism’ in the history of biology, and I examine how the three meanings of this term have come to be featured in the philosophy of biology, (...) situating the new ‘mechanismic program’ in this context. I argue that the leading advocates of the mechanismic program (i.e., Craver, Darden, Bechtel, etc.) inadvertently conflate the different senses of ‘mechanism’. Specifically, they all inappropriately endow causal mechanisms with the ontic status of machine mechanisms, and this invariably results in problematic accounts of the role played by mechanism-talk in scientific practice. I suggest that for effective analyses of the concept of mechanism, causal mechanisms need to be distinguished from machine mechanisms, and the new mechanismic program in the philosophy of biology needs to be demarcated from the traditional concerns of mechanistic biology. (shrink)

One challenge to the rationality of religious commitment has it that faith is unreasonable because it involves believing on insufficient evidence. However, this challenge and influential attempts to reply depend on assumptions about what it is to have faith that are open to question. I distinguish between three conceptions of faith each of which can claim some plausible grounding in the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Questions about the rationality or justification of religious commitment and the extent of compatibility with doubt look different (...) on accounts of faith in which trust or hope, rather than belief, are the primary basis for the commitments. On such accounts, while the person of faith has a stake in the truth of the content, practical as well as epistemic considerations can legitimately figure in normative appraisals. Trust and hope can be appropriate in situations of recognized risk, need not involve self-deception, and are compatible with the idea that one's purely epistemic opinions should be responsive only to evidence.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Authentic faith and acknowledged risk: dissolving the problem of faith and reasonVolume 49, Issue 1DANIEL J. MCKAUGHAN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000200Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Authentic faith and acknowledged risk: dissolving the problem of faith and reasonVolume 49, Issue 1DANIEL J. MCKAUGHAN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000200Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Authentic faith and acknowledged risk: dissolving the problem of faith and reasonVolume 49, Issue 1DANIEL J. MCKAUGHAN DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0034412512000200Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

We address the ethics of scenarios in which one party entraps, intentionally tempts or intentionally tests the virtue of another. We classify, in a new manner, three distinct types of acts that are of concern, namely acts of entrapment, of intentional temptation and of virtue testing. Our classification is, for each kind of scenario, of itself neutral concerning the question whether the agent acts permissibly. We explain why acts of entrapment are more ethically objectionable than like acts of intentional temptation (...) and why these, in turn, are more ethically objectionable than like acts of virtue testing. Along the way, we scrutinize, and eventually reject, the view that acts of entrapment are ethically unacceptable because intentional temptation is involved in entrapment. (shrink)

A number of formal models, including a highly influential model from Hong and Page, purport to show that functionally diverse groups often beat groups of individually high-performing agents in solving problems. Thompson argues that in Hong and Page’s model, that the diverse groups are created by a random process explains their success, not the diversity. Here, I defend the diversity interpretation of the Hong and Page result. The failure of Thompson’s argument shows that to understand the value of functional diversity, (...) we should be clearer about how we conceive of and measure that diversity. (shrink)

The question of whether chimpanzees, like humans, reason about unobservable mental states remains highly controversial. On one account, chimpanzees are seen as possessing a psychological system for social cognition that represents and reasons about behaviors alone. A competing account allows that the chimpanzee's social cognition system additionally construes the behaviors it represents in terms of mental states. Because the range of behaviors that each of the two systems can generate is not currently known, and because the latter system depends upon (...) the former, determining the presence of this latter system in chimpanzees is a far more difficult task than has been assumed. We call for recognition of this problem, and a shift from experimental paradigms that cannot resolve this question, to ones that might allow researchers to intelligently determine when it is necessary to postulate the presence of a system which reasons about both behavior and mental states. (shrink)

Public discussions of political and social issues are often characterized by deep and persistent polarization. In social psychology, it’s standard to treat belief polarization as the product of epistemic irrationality. In contrast, we argue that the persistent disagreement that grounds political and social polarization can be produced by epistemically rational agents, when those agents have limited cognitive resources. Using an agent-based model of group deliberation, we show that groups of deliberating agents using coherence-based strategies for managing their limited resources tend (...) to polarize into different subgroups. We argue that using that strategy is epistemically rational for limited agents. So even though group polarization looks like it must be the product of human irrationality, polarization can be the result of fully rational deliberation with natural human limitations. (shrink)

Research suggests that international assignment experience enhances awareness of societal stakeholders, influences personal values, and provides rare and valuable resources. Based on these arguments, we hypothesize that CEO international assignment experience will lead to increased corporate social performance (CSP) and will be moderated by the CEO's functional background. Using a sample of 393 CEOs of S&P 500 companies and three independent data sources, we find that CEO international assignment experience is positively related to CSP and is significantly moderated by the (...) CEO's functional background. Specifically, CEOs with international assignment experience and an output functional background (e.g., marketing and sales) are positively associated with greater CSP. (shrink)

No detailed description available for "Language in the Philosophy of Hegel".

How does trust relate to faith? We do not know of a theory-neutral way to answer our question. So, we begin with what we regard as a plausible theory of faith according to which, in slogan form, faith is resilient reliance. Next, we turn to contemporary theories of trust. They are not of one voice. Still, we can use them to indicate ways in which trust and faith might both differ from and resemble each other. This is what we do. (...) Along the way, we evaluate substantive issues related to these possible differences and similarities. (shrink)

We assess John Bishop’s theory of the nature of Christian faith in God, as most recently expressed in ‘Reasonable Faith and Reasonable Fideism’, although we dip into other writings as well. We explain several concerns we have about it. However, in the end, our reflections lead us to propose a modified theory, one that avoids our concerns while remaining consonant with some of his guiding thoughts about the nature of Christian faith in God. We also briefly examine three normative issues (...) Bishop’s views present. (shrink)

Sex differences in mortality rates stem from genetic, physiological, behavioral, and social causes that are best understood when integrated in an evolutionary life history framework. This paper investigates the Male-to-Female Mortality Ratio (M:F MR) from external and internal causes and across contexts to illustrate how sex differences shaped by sexual selection interact with the environment to yield a pattern with some consistency, but also with expected variations due to socioeconomic and other factors.

Theorists attending to the epistemic condition on responsibility are divided over whether moral ignorance is ever exculpatory. While those who argue that reasonable expectation is required for blameworthiness often maintain that moral ignorance can excuse, theorists who embrace a quality of will approach to blameworthiness are not sanguine about the prospect of excuses among morally ignorant wrongdoers. Indeed, it is sometimes argued that moral ignorance always reflects insufficient care for what matters morally, and therefore that moral ignorance never excuses. Furthermore, (...) quality of will theorists treat their skepticism about excuses for the morally ignorant as a natural implication of their approach. It is therefore unsurprising that, while many have argued for the blamelessness of certain morally ignorant agents on grounds concerning reasonable expectation, the possibility that morally ignorant agents might be blameless even according to quality of will views has not been adequately addressed. I illustrate and explain how it is possible for morally ignorant agents to display sufficient care for the morally relevant features of their wrong behavior. Thus, even if quality of will views are correct, moral ignorance sometimes excuses. (shrink)

In this essay, I argue in favor of a novel interpretation of the semantic theory that can be found in the Later Mohist writings. Recent interpretations by Chad Hansen and Chris Fraser cast the Later Mohist theory as a realist theory; this includes attributing to the Later Mohists what we can call “kind-realism,” the idea that there is some correct scheme of kind-terms that carves the world at its joints. While I agree with Hansen and Fraser that the Later Mohist (...) theory is realist in various ways, I offer challenges to their kind-realist interpretations, and argue instead for a kind-conventionalist interpretation on which there is no fixed, correct set of kinds, leaving schemes of kind terms to be determined by conventional decisions that occur during disputation. (shrink)

Philosophy of biology is often said to have emerged in the last third of the twentieth century. Prior to this time, it has been alleged that the only authors who engaged philosophically with the life sciences were either logical empiricists who sought to impose the explanatory ideals of the physical sciences onto biology, or vitalists who invoked mystical agencies in an attempt to ward off the threat of physicochemical reduction. These schools paid little attention to actual biological science, and as (...) a result philosophy of biology languished in a state of futility for much of the twentieth century. The situation, we are told, only began to change in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when a new generation of researchers began to focus on problems internal to biology, leading to the consolidation of the discipline. In this paper we challenge this widely accepted narrative of the history of philosophy of biology. We do so by arguing that the most important tradition within early twentieth-century philosophy of biology was neither logical empiricism nor vitalism, but the organicist movement that flourished between the First and Second World Wars. We show that the organicist corpus is thematically and methodologically continuous with the contemporary literature in order to discredit the view that early work in the philosophy of biology was unproductive, and we emphasize the desirability of integrating the historical and contemporary conversations into a single, unified discourse. (shrink)

Popular discussions of faith often assume that having faith is a form of believing on insufficient evidence and that having faith is therefore in some way rationally defective. Here I offer a characterization of action-centered faith and show that action-centered faith can be both epistemically and practically rational even under a wide variety of subpar evidential circumstances.

This article investigates the use of favors by managers of BRIC firms to accomplish business goals, the ethicality of which should be determined by the moral reasoning in these countries rather than from a developed country perspective. We define a favor as an exchange of outcomes between individuals, typically utilizing one's connections, that is based on a commonly understood cultural tradition, with reciprocity by the receiver typically not being immediate, and its value being less than what would constitute bribery within (...) that cultural context. This exchange normally takes place between and among members of networks, and may involve a network outsider contacted by a network insider on behalf of another insider. We see the giver and receiver of the favor, as well as network insiders and outsiders, as stakeholders. Additionally, society could also be considered to be a stakeholder since the practice of using favors generally inhibits the development of legitimate, strong formal institutions, since the use of favors in emerging economies is rooted in cultural traditions that we view as informal institutions. Furthermore, we assert that the practice of using favors can lead to bribery which harms society as a stakeholder both morally and economically. We posit that BRIC-country managers' behaviors stem from informal, culturally based practices—jeito in Brazil, blat/sviazi in Russia, jaan-pehchaan in India, and guanxi in China. We utilize institutional theory to explain why favors are relied upon, and ISCT to support the argument that the use of favors in environments like the BRICs is generally considered ethical. (shrink)

This paper argues that a plant together with the symbiotic fungus attached to its roots, a mycorrhizal collective, is an evolutionary individual, and further, that mycorrhizal individuality has important implications for evolutionary theory. Theoretical individuation is defended and then employed to show that mycorrhizal collectives function as interactors according to David Hull’s replicator-interactor model of evolution by natural selection, and because they have the potential to engage in pseudo-vertical transmission, mycorrhizal collectives also function as Darwinian individuals, according to Peter Godfrey-Smith’s (...) Darwinian Populations model of evolution by natural selection. Mycorrhizae in nature usually connect the roots of multiple plants, so mycorrhizal individuality entails the existence of overlapping evolutionary individuals, and because the potential to engage in pseudo-vertical transmission comes in degrees, it follows that these overlapping evolutionary individuals also come in degrees. I suggest here that the degree of evolutionary individuality in a symbiotic collective corresponds to its probability of reproducing with vertical or pseudo-vertical transmission. This probability constitutes a fourth parameter of graded Darwinian individuality in collective reproducers and warrants an update to Godfrey-Smith’s 3D model. (shrink)

Philosophers are approaching a consensus that biological individuality, including evolutionary individuality, comes in degrees. Graded evolutionary individuality presents a puzzle when juxtaposed with another widely embraced view: that evolutionary individuality follows from being a selectable member of a Darwinian population. Population membership is, on the orthodox view, a bivalent condition, so how can members of Darwinian populations vary in their degree of individuality? This article offers a solution to the puzzle, by locating difference in degree of evolutionary individuality at the (...) level of population lineages, some of which are more Darwinian than others. In doing so, it sheds light on graded individuality in overlapping and nested population lineages, such as those that arise in multilevel selection and symbiotic collectives. (shrink)

An increasingly popular theory of moral responsibility, Attributionism, identifies attitudes as the locus of direct responsibility. And yet, two agents with qualitatively identical attitudes may differ in their responsibility due to a difference in whether they act on those attitudes. On the most plausible interpretation of Attributionism, attitude duplicates differ in their responsibility only with respect to the scope of what they’re responsible for: one agent is responsible for only their attitudes, while the other is responsible for their attitudes and (...) for acting in a way that reflects those attitudes. Against this, I argue that attitude duplicates may also differ with respect to their degrees of praiseworthiness, and that this is best explained by either the effort or sacrifice instantiated in one’s actions—explanations unavailable to Attributionism. If this is correct, then Attributionism fails to provide an adequate account of praiseworthiness, and therefore fails as a theory of moral responsibility. (shrink)

The controversy over the old ideal of “value-free science” has cooled significantly over the past decade. Many philosophers of science now agree that even ethical and political values may play a substantial role in all aspects of scientific inquiry. Consequently, in the last few years, work in science and values has become more specific: Which values may influence science, and in which ways? Or, how do we distinguish illegitimate from illegitimate kinds of influence? In this paper, I argue that this (...) problem requires philosophers of science to take a new direction. I present two case studies in the influence of values on scientific inquiry: feminist values in archaeology and commercial values in pharmaceutical research. I offer a preliminary assessment of these cases, that the influence of values was legitimate in the feminist case, but not in the pharmaceutical case. I then turn to three major approaches to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate influences of values, including the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values and Heather Douglas’ distinction between direct and indirect roles for values. I argue that none of these three approaches gives an adequate analysis of the two cases. In the concluding section, I briefly sketch my own approach, which draws more heavily on ethics than the others, and is more promising as a solution to the current problem. This is the new direction in which I think science and values should move. (shrink)

People often fail to detect large changes to scenes, provided that the changes occur during a visual disruption. This phenomenon, known as ''change blindness,'' occurs both in the laboratory and in real-world situations in which changes occur unexpectedly. The pervasiveness of the inability to detect changes is consistent with the theoretical notion that we internally represent relatively little information from our visual world from one glance at a scene to the next. However, evidence for change blindness does not necessarily imply (...) the absence of such a representation-people could also miss changes if they fail to compare an existing representation of the pre-change scene to the post-change scene. In three experiments, we show that people often do have a representation of some aspects of the pre-change scene even when they fail to report the change. And, in fact, they appear to ''discover'' this memory and can explicitly report details of a changed object in response to probing questions. The results of these real-world change detection studies are discussed in the context of broader claims about change blindness. (shrink)